


caving and crumbling

by Pterodactyl



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Enemies to Friends, F/F, MAYBE!, To lovers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-16 00:26:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14152668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pterodactyl/pseuds/Pterodactyl
Summary: while on assignment in london, lena runs into an old enemy.





	caving and crumbling

**Author's Note:**

> title from hayley kiyoko's cliff's edge.
> 
> thanks to angie for gassing me up when it comes to this fic. i hope you like it! 
> 
> this is my first foray into writing sombracer, so obviously i had to take it to the pain place. i hope you guys like it, maybe i'll write more for this verse someday. idk exactly whats happening with emily in this fic, so i just.... didn't write her. i'm a coward. love y'all.

“Perimeter clear,” Lena mutters into her comm unit, trying her best to look inconspicuous amongst the crowds surrounding the half destroyed building site, “Genji, are you clear? Over.”

“ _No suspicious activity spotted_ , _over._ ” he confirms quietly.

“McCree? Are you good?” she picks at the lining of her jacket, “Anything interesting?”

There’s silence and she rolls her eyes. “Over.”

 _“All clear here, darlin’_ ,” Jesse drawls, “ _Nothing but a big old pile of rubble. Over._ ”

Lena _tsks_ quietly, scanning the crowd for the millionth time. When someone bombed the half completed omnic community centre being constructed in London Winston had rushed them to the scene, anticipating Talon presence trying to leave the area, but so far all she’s seen is a lot of police and even more gobby bystanders.

“Winston, any luck getting us in on the scene? Over.” she tries.

“ _Unfortunately, no,”_ Winston’s voice sounds tinny, so he must be quite a distance away, “ _They didn’t take suggestions from a talking gorilla particularly well_. _And you needn’t say over, you know, we can tell when you’re not speaking._ ”

“Alright,” Lena tries not to sound disappointed, “Lúcio? Anything?” Then, just for fun, she adds, “Over.”

“ _Nothing, Lena. I got at least three people figuring out who I am, though._ _Gonna change positions in a few. Uh, over._ ”

Lena’s about to reply that they may as well pack it up and go home when a flash of colour in the crowd catches her eye. The high collared purple coat brings back a memory of Winston’s briefing after the whole Katya Volskaya incident, and on a whim Lena leaves her post under the awning of a coffee shop and steps out onto the street.

“Be advised, I’ve just spotted a potential suspect,” she breaks into a jog, trying to catch a glimpse of the owner of the purple jacket’s face, “About five foot five, wearing a purple -”

As if they heard her voice, the person stops, flips their hood off their head and turns.

Lena recognises that face, and that face recognises her too. Fifty feet away, Talon’s latest recruit smirks, lifts a hand and waves.

There’s a crackle in her ear and Lena watches her lips move as the words are relayed in her ear.

“ _Catch me if you can, Tracer_.”

Oh, _shit._

She goes from zero to a sprint in about a second, blinking between steps and closing the distance between her and where Sombra stood. But by the time she’s there Sombra is gone, and Lena curses and fumbles to engage her comm unit.

“This is Tracer!” she yells as she waits for her accelerator to recharge, booking it through the crowd with little regard for who gets shoved aside. “I’m in pursuit of a Talon operative, I need backup, _now!_ ”

Genji replies immediately. “ _Location?_ ”

“Moving away from the west perimeter fast,” she says, eyes fixed on the purple jacket moving through the crowd ahead of her, “In towards the building site, intercept me at either the north or south, do you copy?”

“ _Loud and clear_ ,” McCree chimes in, “ _Are they armed?_ ”

“Likely,” Lena’s heart is pounding in her chest as she gains on them, “I think she’s gonna swing north, Jesse, are you -”

She’s wrong. Sombra jumps, plants one foot firmly on the back of a photographer and clears the cordon by several feet. Lena swears, puts on a burst of speed helped by her accelerator and hurdles the cordon, starting to feel out of breath as her pistols spin into her palms. “She’s in the building site! Repeat, she is in the building site! I’m in pursuit, we need feet on the ground _now!_ ”

Sombra’s a good thirty feet ahead of her now, heading straight for the crumbling remains of the centre. Lena saves the charges on her accelerator, certain she’ll need recall for whatever shit Sombra’s going to pull.

“ _Hey!_ ” she yells, “Stop! I’m ordering you to _stop!_ ”

Her earpiece crackles again as she follows the flash of purple. “ _Where’s the fun in that?_ ”

“Oh, fuck you,” Lena growls, sick of the chase as she swings around a corner, “I said _sto -_ ”

She blinks directly into a beam lying across the pathway so hard that the air explodes from her lungs. Lena falls flat on her back, desperately trying to draw breath, and through the tears welling up in her eyes she sees purple flicker into sight out of nothing.

“Hello there, _love_ ,” Sombra says in a facsimile of a British accent. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Coughing, Lena manages to choke out, “You’re surrounded. Surrender now -”

“And what? I can disappear? Overwatch is dead, you know,” Sombra crouches next to her, arms folded on her knees, “I’m not surrendering just so you can kill me. No Overwatch, no laws. No. More. Sombra.” She punctuates each word with a tap to Lena’s forehead.

Lena’s getting her breath back, but she keeps gasping like she hasn’t. “You won’t - make it out of here -”

“Oh, really?” Sombra smirks, “Is your monkey friend going to stop me? I’d like to see him try -”

Lena launches herself upwards, tackling Sombra around the middle and sending them both crashing back into a pile of drywall. Lena feels it crumble under their combined weight, but then it keeps crumbling, and keeps crumbling, and then she realises they’re falling.

She reaches for recall but it’s not there, and before she can think about blinking her world goes black.

**

Lena wakes like she’s surfacing from water - desperately gasping for air as dust clogs her throat. There’s something sharp pressing into her ribcage, pain splitting the back of her head, and she feels -

She feels disconnected.

Lena’s hands fly to her accelerator and her heart drops as she feels the buckled casing. Already, the fuzzy feeling has started in her fingers. She forces her aching head to focus, trying to assess the damage, but there’s dirt in her eyes and even without that she’s seeing double.

“Shit.” Lena’s mouth is dry, so dry she can’t even spit out the plaster coating her tongue. The light from her accelerator is flickering, casting a ghostly glow over the debris looming over her. There’s only a few feet of space above where she’s lying, and Lena feels dread set in low in her stomach.

“Hello?” she tries, “Anyone there?”

Her voice echoes back, sounding pathetic and small.

Lena calls louder. “Hello? _Hello?_ _Can anyone hear me?_ ”

The exertion sends her into another coughing fit, which in turn makes the pain between her ribs even worse. She lays back, head spinning, and feels the fuzziness spread from the tips of her toes up to her ankles.

She’s all alone, and no one knows where she is.

And she’s slipping out of time.

Lena must lay there for two, three minutes before she becomes aware of the sound of breathing.

At first she thinks it’s the building creaking, but then the breathing pauses as someone audibly clears their throat, and Lena finally clocks that things are infinitely worse than she thought.

She tries to trigger her pistols to leap into her hands but too late remembers summoning them while chasing Sombra. They’re either lying on the ground outside the centre or they’re somewhere in the ruins surrounding her, probably broken.

“Bloody hell,” she curses, reaching out for anything that she can use as a weapon. Her hands find fragments of concrete, splinters, and then - thank _god_ \- a solid piece of iron rebar. Breathing shallowly, she inches it across the floor towards her leg, painfully aware of the scraping noise it’s making. It’s not as fancy as her pistols, but it’ll pack a pretty heavy punch if she times her swing right. Grimacing, she pushes herself up onto her side so the light from her accelerator casts over the rest of the space, and finally sees the Talon agent.

She’s sitting up but looking down, legs crossed and hands laying loosely in her lap. For a second Lena thinks she’s asleep, or unconscious, and then she catches the glint of light reflecting off her eyes and realises.

Sombra’s been watching her the whole time.

“Good to see you’re finally awake,” she says, “I was starting to worry I was sharing this with a corpse.”

Lena flings herself forward, the rebar clutched tight in her hand, and swings it directly through -

Where Sombra’s head _was_ , because as soon as she starts moving Sombra’s gone. She reappears opposite Lena, crouching, and says “I thought you might try tha -”

Lena pivots on one knee and leaps forward again, this time aiming for Sombra’s side, but halfway through her lunge she - slips.

The rebar clatters to the floor as every molecule in her body shifts sideways through time. Lena gasps, clutching her chest as she tries to keep herself together. She hits the floor and feels herself flicker, in-out-in-out-in-out, and the fuzziness has spread to her hips. Moving too fast was a bad idea - she has minutes at best.

“Hey,” Sombra shakes her shoulder, “Hey. What the hell are you doing?”

Lena clutches her accelerator, trying to find the edge of the casing to flip it open and see if she can find any snapped wiring, but her hands are flickering in and out too fast for her to do anything.

“I - I’m - s-slipping,” she manages, panic seizing her. If she slips out of time here, with no one but Sombra, there’s no telling how long it’ll be before someone manages to find her again.

“What?”

“I said I’m _slipping!_ ” she pulls herself together just long enough to try and shove Sombra away, but her hands go straight through her.

“Where’s the access panel for your locator?”

The question catches her off guard and Lena freezes. “What?”

“The access panel,” in the dim, ever more faint light from her accelerator, Lena sees Sombra withdraw a small package from inside her coat, “I can fix it.”

“Do not touch -”

“Listen, _Lena_ ,” Sombra slaps the package down and Lena sees that it’s a tiny pack of tools, “If you disappear here, they’re all going to blame me, and even I can’t avoid every Overwatch sympathiser on Earth. So tell me where the access is and let me fix it!”

Lena looks into her eyes and sees nothing but desperation.

She points to the top panel of the accelerator, the part that’s completely buckled. Sombra wrenches it off in a surprising show of strength, revealing the wiring beneath.

“What are you doing?” Lena asks, suddenly aware of how vulnerable she is, “What are you -”

Sombra pulls something from her pocket, and Lena sees that it’s one of the translocators. “When I acquired the technology for this -”

Lena can’t not interrupt. “You _stole_ it.”

“Tomato, tomahto,” Sombra pulls several wires out of the accelerator, “It’s basically a reversed accelerator. If I can wire this in right -”

Lena feels nausea roll in her stomach as her body starts to dissociate again. “Whatever you’re doing, you need to hurry.”

Sombra mutters something in Spanish, which Lena roughly translates to _shut up and let me do my job_. Her body jolts when one of the wires touches the outside casing, and Lena shuts her eyes. Whatever’s going to happen next, whether it’s a knife to the throat or months in dissociation, she doesn’t want to see it coming.

She’s waiting for the inevitable, for every molecule to slide in different directions until she’s untethered and floating, but the opposite happens. The nausea fades.

“What did you do?” Lena asks, afraid to open her eyes.

“ _Nada mal_ ,” Sombra says to herself, “It’ll do.”

Lena squints down at her chest, sees the accelerator glowing purple instead of blue. The flickering has stopped, and though she still feels untethered, it’s not getting worse. It just… is.

“You fixed it?” she breathes, and the corner of Sombra’s mouth twists. “It’s temporary. Hopefully someone will get us out of here soon.”

Lena can’t help but laugh. “Us? You and your lot would happily leave me to die down here.”

Sombra’s mouth twists further. “Me and my who?”

“Your _lot,_ ” now Lena’s not seconds away from disappearing into the time stream she’s actually quite pissed off, “You and Talon. You expect me to believe you’re not the reason all of this happened?”

“Are you referring to the first incident or the one that landed us down here?” Sombra looks vaguely irritated. “Because I can assure you, I had nothing to do with either.”

“You expect me to believe that?” Lena repeats, growing more and more annoyed.

“Well, it’s the truth.”

“It may be the truth for you, but is it the truth for the bastards you work for?”

“What would I have to gain from that?”

“I’m not asking about you, I’m asking about -”

“Let’s get one thing straight now, _Lena_ ,” Sombra smiles but it’s more of her teeth being bared than an actual positive expression, “I work for myself, and myself only.”

Lena snorts. “That’s something that people say when they know they’re being used.”

“Oh really?”

She holds Sombra’s gaze. “Yeah.”

There’s a second of silence and then Sombra laughs and looks away. “You have no idea.”

“No idea of what?” Lena pushes herself upright, grimacing at the pain in her ribs.

“No idea of how deep it all goes,” Sombra looks her right in the eyes, “You really don’t have a clue.”

“Oh yeah? Well why don’t you bloody well enlighten me, then?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Sombra laughs again, “The things I can tell you about your idols. About _Gabe._ ”

Rage burns hot in Lena’s chest, pushing away the pain. “Don’t you call him that.”

She expects Sombra to keep weaseling away at the weakness now it’s in the open, but instead her face softens and she loses the sharp edge in her eyes. “You really cared for him.”

Lena lays back again, too tired to keep sitting up. “You have no idea.”

“I do,” Sombra says, and Lena actually finds herself inclined to believe it, “I do. He’s… an admirable man.”

“He was,” Lena says, “He was.”

“You weren’t Blackwatch though,” Sombra sits forward, “How did you know him?”

“That’s classified,” Lena says weakly.

“Classified?” Sombra snorts, “You do know I’m the world's greatest hacker, right? There’s not a classified file I can’t declassify.”

“Okay, how about it’s none of your bloody business.”

“ _Your bloody business_ ,” Sombra echoes, “You know, before I came here, I thought all of you spoke like the Queen.”

Lena laughs despite herself. “Really?”

“You know, cream tea and all of that. Scones.” She draws the _o_ out. “But I think I like how you speak more.”

Lena actually finds herself smiling. “Most people say I sound like a caricature.”

“Well, most people ask me if I speak Mexican.”

That makes her laugh again. Sombra tilts her head. “So you’re not going to tell me about Mr. Reyes?”

“Not on your nelly,” Lena rests her head on a reasonably flat piece of debris, “He’s off the table.”

“So what’s on the table?” she sees Sombra shuffle closer in the dim light of the accelerator, “Childhood pets?”

“A gerbil,” Lena says, “Called Scribbles. You?”

“Didn’t have one.”

“Seriously? Not even a goldfish?”

“Have you ever tried keeping a goldfish alive in the middle of an omnic crisis?” Sombra clicks her tongue, “ _No es f_ _á_ _cil_.”

Lena’s words dry up in her mouth as she realises her misstep. Of course, Sombra would have been part of the devastation the omnics wreaked across Mexico.

“Sorry,” she says, “I didn’t realise.”

Sombra shrugs. “It is what it is.”

The silence between them grows larger and larger, filling the room. Lena stares at the rubble above her, shivering. Her breath puffs out, visible in the dim light of her accelerator, and she rubs her hands up and down her arms.

“Are you cold?”

“No,” Lena says, not even convincing herself, “I’m fine.”

“You’re shaking,” Sombra says, “Are you sure?”

“I’m fine.”

Sombra clicks her tongue. “You’re not fooling anyone. Here.”

She shrugs her jacket off and throws it across Lena’s legs. Underneath she’s wearing a simple dark shirt, though the fabric appears to end at her shoulders where the vivid purple and pinks of her sleeves begin.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Lena asks.

Sombra tilts her head. “What do you mean?”

“Fixing my accelerator. Giving me your jacket. You hate Overwatch, you hate everything we stand for, why didn’t you put a bullet in my head the second you saw I was awake?”

Sombra is silent, her head bowed in the half light. The silence seems like it’s going to be unbroken until she draws a breath and says, “We’re not so different, you and I.”

Lena tries to summon something rude, something filled with vitriol, but she can’t. Because she looks into Sombra’s eyes, tinted purple, and thinks, _yeah, you’re probably right_.

With her accelerator damaged and no power, Lena has no perception of time. It could be hours or minutes that pass by as she sits there, staring at the rubble above as her accelerator clings to life. There’s a strange rhythm to it - it dims, then flickers twice, stays strong for a few moments then dims again. It repeats like that, over and over, and Lena finds herself matching her breathing to the dimming and brightening. It helps with the pain that runs as an undercurrent through every movement, every heartbeat, every breath.

Sombra coughs, changes position. She moves gingerly, as if she’s nursing several bruised ribs or a jarred spine, and leans her head up against the wall.

“What’s your name?” Lena asks.

“My name?” Sombra arches an eyebrow, “What?”

Lena herself is not entirely sure where the question had come from, but she doesn’t fight it. “Your name. I refuse you -” she pauses, closes her eyes and concentrates. “I refuse _to_ believe you were born Sombra.”

“It doesn’t matter what I was born, it matters who I am now,” Sombra retorts.

Lena pauses again, to take a breath. “But -”

She’s cut off by a low grinding noise. It sounds like metal against concrete, and they both look up at the low ceiling.

“What the hell was -”

Sombra in turn is silenced by an even louder noise, the screeching of metal on metal, and Lena thinks of the huge metal beam that she had blinked into and says, “I don’t think that’s good.”

“Here,” Sombra offers out a hand, “Come this way.”

“What?”

“You’re under rubble, I’m under solid rock,” Sombra indicates the concrete above her head, “Get over here.”

“It’s fine,” Lena says, unwilling to move. The fix for her accelerator is temporary, and moving could short it out. She doesn’t want to let Sombra at her lifeline any more than is strictly necessary.

“Don’t be a hero,” Sombra says as dust begins to fall from the ceiling of debris above her, “Just get over here.”

“It’s _fine_ , Lena repeats, even as she blinks the grit out of her eyes, “If I move -”

There’s a rumbling noise, and the end of their pocket of safety begins to crumble.

“Oh shit,” Lena says.

She starts to backpedal, pressing up against the wall, but before she can even get her feet underneath her Sombra grabs her by the collar of her jacket and pulls so hard that Lena goes _flying_ backwards, the broken brick and mortar chasing her feet until the concrete roof prevents it from encroaching onto their space any further.

Not that there’s much space left, anyway.

Lena’s back is pressed against Sombra’s arm, her legs folded up in the tiny space. The purple glow of the accelerator does nothing but highlight Sombra’s chest, which is uncomfortably close to Lena’s face. From this close, Lena can see every stitch on her shirt, the remarkably sharp angle of her jaw, even the faint lights pulsing through the hardware that runs from her temple down to the back of her neck as Sombra looks from side to side.

“This isn’t ideal,” she says dryly, and Lena can see her swallow, see the tension in her clenched jaw. “Any ideas?”

“Nope,” Lena says, shifting slightly so Sombra’s chest isn’t taking up 90% of her vision. Her head is starting to feel fuzzy, not chronal-disassociation fuzzy, but like her ears are slowly being packed full of cotton wool. The pain in her ribs has spread, down to her lower abdomen, and her heart is pounding in her chest.

Sombra shuffles slightly closer, her arm braced above them, and Lena looks upward at the uncomfortably close concrete ceiling. She has to focus hard to get any words out, like her brain has been replaced with foam. “How long do you - do you think we have?”

“Not long enough,” Sombra thumps her fist against the concrete, and more dust falls down on them. Lena coughs and then groans as the pain in her chest increases tenfold.

“Are you okay?” Sombra glances down at her, and Lena actually sees _concern_ in her eyes.

“I’m fine,” she says, looking away. Sombra clicks her tongue, but says nothing.

They sit in silence, the only sound that of their breathing. The tiny space is heating up, and Lena closes her eyes. “This isn’t how I saw my day going.”

Sombra snorts. “Tell me about it. Stuck in a tiny hole with an Overwatch agent?”

Lena prickles a little at that, as if the situation would be better if Sombra were stuck here with a Talon agent instead. “You never did tell me what you were doing here.”

Somba grins and parrots Lena’s line back to her. “Classified.”

“Oh, come on,” Lena grimaces, shuffles and wriggles until she’s sitting as close to opposite Sombra as she can get in less than four feet of space. “I’ll take it to my grave.”

They both laugh, even if it’s slightly forced. Lena extends her hand. “Pinky promise. I won’t tell.”

Sombra scoffs, but she reaches out and links her finger with Lena’s. They don’t pull apart.

“I don’t hate omnics,” Sombra says, “I wanted to see who did it. To catch them in the act.”

Lena says, “You don’t seem like the vigilante justice type.”

“Every crime is a puzzle,” Sombra taps her temple, “I like to solve them.”

“That’s… kind of noble,” Lena says, “I never pegged you for the noble type.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Sombra replies. Under any other circumstances, Lena would take that as a threat, an implication of potential for violence. Right now, it just sounds sad.

Lena’s accelerator flickers just as the rubble above them groans ominously. Instinctively they move closer together, holding their breath. Lena closes her eyes and realises that, at some point, she has taken Sombra’s hand. They hold on tightly, heads ducked together, trying to breathe as dust fills their lungs, and wait.

But again, nothing further happens. Their eyes meet, and Lena takes some comfort in the fact that Sombra looks just as scared as she feels.

“We’ll probably run out of air before we get crushed,” Sombra says, “I’ve heard it’s a good way to go. You just fall asleep.”

Lena shakes her head. “Don’t be pessimistic. There’s still time. They’re probably looking for us right now.”

Their faces are only a foot apart now, and Lena thinks the lack of oxygen must be getting to her because all she can think about is how pretty Sombra is. Even with her hair and skin coated in a thin layer of plaster and dust, she’s undeniably beautiful. The type of person, she thinks, that if they weren’t doomed to be enemies by their jobs, she would ask on a date.

_Maybe when we get out of here._

There’s another sound, the slow crunching of brick on brick above them.

“I bet that’s them digging for us,” Lena says as confidently as she can, “They’ll get down to us soon.”

“I don’t know,” Sombra says, “I don’t think anyone’s coming for us.”

“You don’t know that,” Lena tries, reaching for the last glimmers of hope, “My friends are out there. Winston’s out there. He wouldn’t…”

Sombra shakes her head. “You really believe that?”

Lena tips her head back against the concrete. “I’m too young to die.”

Sombra says nothing in reply.

They sit in silence for a little while longer, and Lena feels her eyes begin to get heavy. Blinking slowly, she considers just slipping away, into a permanent sleep. Sombra said it was an easy way to go.

“We should write notes,” she says suddenly, “For when they find us.”

She thinks of Lúcio, Winston, Mei and Angela. Her family. She wouldn’t want to die without letting them know what they mean to her.

“You write a note,” Sombra says, her voice barely audible, “I have nobody to write to.”

Lena closes her eyes. She’s starting to feel sick, lightheaded, but she can’t remember the symptoms of asphyxia. Maybe even that’s a symptom. Maybe this is her body giving out on her.

Sombra suddenly says, “Do you hear that?”

“No,” Lena mumbles. She doesn’t hear anything but Sombra’s voice and the roaring in her ears.

“I can hear something. I can hear -”

Lena’s limbs are growing heavier. She feels like she’s slowly sinking down through treacle, everything getting fainter and quieter around her.

“Hey. _Hey!_ You’re gonna give up now?” she feels Sombra shake her shoulder, but opening her eyes seems impossible. She just mutters some incoherent reply, ready to slip away.

“Don’t you pass out on me now,” Sombra mutters as she shakes harder, but Lena couldn’t move a muscle if she tried.

“Hey. _Lena_. Lena, I can hear them digging for us. You were right. They’re coming.”

Lena’s heart leaps, but she still can’t open her eyes. She tries to say something, anything, but all she can do is mumble faintly.

“Lena, squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” Sombra’s voice sounds like it’s coming down a long, long tunnel, like she’s standing miles away, “C’mon, don’t fade out on me this close to the end. We still have plenty of oxygen left, don’t fuck with me like this.”

Somehow, someway, Lena manages to squeeze. She thinks back to a class in sixth form on what would happen if a human fell into a black hole, how they would stretch and stretch like spaghetti. It feels like her limbs are being pulled away from her, like they’re barely even connected any more.

“C’mon, Lena, open your eyes,” she feels someone pat her cheek lightly, “Stay with me. I can hear them. Can you?”

It takes every ounce of strength in her body, but Lena manages to crack open one eye. Her vision is blurry and her headache, once only on the periphery of her senses, seems to be all she can feel now.

Sombra smiles at her, relief evident in her face. “Hey. Stay with me, okay? We’re gonna get out of here.”

 _I can’t_ , Lena thinks. She’s so tired, and her whole body hurts. The idea of sitting awake so she can feel every second of suffocation is abhorrent.

“Listen to me,” Lena feels Sombra’s hands on her shoulders, shaking again, hard enough for it to hurt, “I’m not about to take the heat for you dying down here, so you better keep your eyes on me. C’mon.”

Lena opens her eyes, everything blurred and washed out in purple. Sombra’s face is right in front of hers, only a few inches away.

“We’re going to get out of here,” she says, “Do you trust me?”

 _Are you kidding?_ Lena wants to say. Sombra shakes her again. “Hey. I need an answer.”

“ _Iguessso,”_ Lena manages to slur. It’s like Sombra is physically forcing her into lucidity, refusing to let her go in peace. The heaviness at the edges of her consciousness seems to recede, for the time being.

“Good,” Sombra says, “Listen, I’m gonna try and send out a homing signal. But I need to use your accelerator as a power source.”

Lena recoils from the idea. “ _No_.”

“I won’t break it, I won’t drain it, I just need something more powerful than my translocators. Please, Lena, I’m begging you. If they are digging they don’t know where to look.”

Lena swallows past the grit in her throat and says, “Do you promise?”

“I swear on my life.”

Lena manages a laugh. “What else…” she has to take a break to catch her breath, “What else do you have to swear on?”

Sombra is still for a moment and then says, “What about my name?”

Lena just looks at her, blurry in the half-light.

“Olivia,” Sombra says, “I swear on my name, Lena. I swear to you I will get us out of here. On my honour.”

“Olivia,” Lena repeats. “Olivia. It’s a good name.”

“Don’t go spreading that around now,” Sombra - no, _Olivia_ \- says, “It’s between you and me.”

Lena can feel herself fading again. She nods, manages barely above a whisper, “I’ll take it to my grave.”

She feels her hand squeezed tight. “Trust me Lena. We will survive this.”

It’s the last thing Lena hears before she passes out.

**

This time Lena comes back to consciousness bit by bit. First she becomes aware of voices she knows, then of voices she doesn’t. Then of pain, dulled but still present, and strength returning to her with the familiar uncomfortable itch of a biotic field.

Groaning, she cracks one eye open, immediately regrets it as the white lights above her send sharp spikes of pain through her head.

“Lena? Lena, can you hear me?”

Lena opens her eyes properly this time, because that’s Angela’s voice. Those are Angela’s hands, cool on her forehead, and Angela’s face looking down on her.

“You’re awake,” she says, “Don’t move.”

Lena doesn’t think she could move if she wanted to. She focuses beyond Angela’s face, sees Genji - visor removed - and Lúcio standing at the foot of her bed.

“Lena!” Lúcio looks like he’s been crying, “Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re alive.”

“And kicking,” Lena croaks, “Where am I?”

“Hospital,” Angela shines a light in her eyes, first the left then the right, and gives Lena a wan smile. “You’ll live.”

Lena’s memory returns to her in drips and drabs. “The centre,” she says slowly. “It collapsed.”

“We thought you were dead,” Lúcio comes around the side of her bed and takes her free hand, “It wasn’t until we got the signal that we knew.”

“It takes more than a downed building to kill me,” Lena squeezes his hand weakly and smiles. Lúcio smiles back.

“We tried to contact Olivia,” Genji says, stepping up behind Lúcio, “But we couldn’t -”

“Olivia?” Lena repeats, “Who is Olivia?”

Genji and Lúcio share a confused glance. “You were saying her name,” Lúcio says slowly, “We thought it was… someone important.”

With a jolt, it comes back to her. _I swear on my name, Lena. I swear to you I will get us out of here._

 _Olivia_.

“Is she?” Lúcio watches her, concerned, “Her name wasn’t in your contact file.”

“It’s nothing,” Lena says, “No one. Nobody.”

Genji looks sceptical, but has the manners to not question the person in the hospital bed. Lúcio seemingly does the same, filing the query away for a time when Lena’s not hooked up to an IV.

Lena’s eyes wander across to the TV on the other side of the room, and her stomach drops. “What day is it?”

“It’s Thursday,” Angela says, and Lena struggles to comprehend the implications. “But it was -”

“Tuesday,” Angela confirms, “You lost about a day and a half. Between the head injury, the surgery, and the anaesthesia, I wouldn’t have expected you to come around for another four or five hours.”

“Surgery?” Lena can’t remember that. The last thing she remembers is Olivia’s hand in hers.

“Ruptured spleen,” Angela fluffs the pillows behind Lena’s head, but there’s a tremble in her hands that speaks to the stress she must have been under, “Nothing to worry about. I called in a favour from a trauma surgeon friend of mine. You’ll make a full recovery.”

Lena has no idea where her spleen is, but she assumes that it’s the pain behind her ribs on her left side. Apart from that, there’s the familiar grating ache of broken ribs, and her head throbs like she’s been clocked on the back of the skull by a cricket bat.

“Wow,” Lena lifts her spare hand to touch the top of her head, encounters layers of gauze instead.

Angela clucks disapprovingly, returns Lena’s hand to its previous position by her side, and says, “I’ll be back in a moment. The others will want to know you’re awake.”

Lúcio goes with her, leaving her and Genji alone. Her friend sighs quietly, lowers himself into the chair beside her bed and removes the rest of his visor. There’s no smile on his face, only an expression that to a person unfamiliar with Genji would appear neutral, but to Lena is clearly unhappy.

“Hey,” Lena reaches out and raps him gently on his metal kneecap, “What’s eating you?”

Genji’s eyes are dark with frustration. “The operative you were chasing. We were unable to detain them.”

For some stupid reason, that makes her want to smile. She buries the urge, shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” Genji says sharply, “You are part of my team.”

“I’m the one who went charging in there without waiting for help,” she gives him a lopsided smile thanks to the split in her lip, “If you want to blame someone, blame me.”

He sighs again. “Next time, don’t go in without backup.”

“I make no promises,” Lena says, which draws a smile from him.

Shaking his head, he stands. “I must return to the ship. Angela estimates you will be discharged by this evening, I need to make arrangements for us to return to the Watchpoint.”

“Sure,” Lena is starting to get exhausted, anyway. Even this short conversation has drained her. “See you soon, cyberman.”

He huffs a laugh, replaces his visor, and lets himself out.

Lena pushes herself up onto one elbow as soon as the door shuts behind him, gritting her teeth through the waves of pain. She’s tethered, which means her accelerator must be close by, and sure enough when she looks down by where Angela had been standing, she sees it.

It’s.

 _Purple_.

The casing is replaced, and though the harness is worse for wear, it looks almost exactly the same. Except for the fact that the pulsing light in the centre is no longer bright electric blue, it’s the shade of purple that Lena saw in the crowd, the same shade it turned when Sombra - _Olivia_ \- had ‘fixed’ it.

She feels like she should be angry, and she kind of is - that’s _her_ accelerator, her piece of hardware, and it’s been contaminated by this person she should call her enemy. But at the same time…

The warmth of the memory of Olivia’s hands in hers, of her smile in the darkness, the glint of her eyes and the way she had sworn to get Lena out alive…

 _Maybe I can get used to this_ , Lena thinks to herself.

Draped over the end of the bed is a ragged, dusty piece of purple fabric. Clutching her ribs with one hand, Lena manages to inch herself into an upright position and hooks it with the tip of her finger, dragging it up and into her lap.

It’s what she thought; Olivia’s coat, looking surprisingly good for something that survived a building collapsing in on top of it. There’s a dark stain on the high collar, another at the hem, and Lena hopes that it’s not Olivia’s blood. That she made it out, somehow. And that’s stupid, because they are _enemies_ , and under any other circumstances she would be hoping that any Talon operative would die a painful death, but now.

It’s just different.

She digs through the pockets - partly out of curiosity, partly out of concern that any sort of information gathering device could be concealed within it. She finds a pack of gum with a label in Spanish, a small spool of wire and, tucked into an small pocket on the inside lining, a tiny fingernail-sized button.

Lena presses it, and then immediately regrets it because it could literally set _anything off,_ she could blow up the whole hospital, the whole city, just because of a stupid feeling that their relationship has gone beyond enemies to something like friends. She braces herself for an explosion, some sort of consequence for her thoughtless action, but instead she just hears a soft chirp.

The button projects a screen in front of her. It’s the same shade of purple as the light her accelerator now casts, and a small message scrolls across.

                                                                                   « _Keep the jacket. I’ll get it back later._

_\- xx O. »_


End file.
